Story Highlights

In 1965, when New York City sought permission to take 100 million gallons of Hudson River water each day at Chelsea, concerns in Dutchess County were profound.

The crescendo of objection culminated in August at a two-day hearing at the county courthouse in Poughkeepsie, the tense event attended by more than 100 federal, state and local officials.

"New York City was pictured as a great sponge yesterday," wrote Poughkeepsie Journal reporter and future publisher Richard K. Wager, "sopping up water from its neighbors to the north and wastefully spilling it into the sea."

Last month, the state Department of Environmental Conservation published a little-noticed announcement of a new permit application by IBM to continue taking as much as 86.4 million gallons of water each day at its Town of Poughkeepsie plant.

No hearing was scheduled. No environmental review was conducted. Little, if any, comment was expected.

IBM's application is required under a new state law that greatly increases the number of entities that must seek a permit if they have been removing at least 100,000 gallons of groundwater or surface water every day. Previously, only suppliers of public drinking water needed a withdrawal permit.

The DEC says that, with rare exceptions, the new law exempts its staff from conducting even the most basic environmental review of any application. The DEC's position has alarmed environmental groups and prompted lawsuits.

"This is a significant concern to all of us that there is no hard look being taken at what the impact of these permits is likely to be," said Kate Hudson, an attorney with the environmental nonprofit Riverkeeper. The DEC declined comment, citing pending litigation.

To be sure, the situations between New York City 50 year ago and applicants such as IBM are different.

New York City's request constituted a new withdrawal during a prolonged drought, worrying many it would push the salt line too close to Poughkeepsie's water treatment plant.

A hearing regarding New York City's request to take 100 million gallons of water from the Hudson River at Chelsea was front-page news in the Poughkeepsie Journal.(Photo: Journal file)

No such drought exists now. And IBM has been taking water from the Hudson River since 1971, according to the DEC, at average volumes closer to 20 million gallons per day.

IBM's application accounts for the largest maximum withdrawal in Dutchess or Ulster counties. Several other local companies have also sought new permits for existing withdrawals. They include:

West Hook Sand & Gravel in Hopewell Junction: 17.1 million GPD from on-site ponds fed by groundwater and stormwater.

Dolomite Products Co. Inc. for its sand and gravel facility on Leedsville Road in Amenia: 5.4 million GPD from a settling pond and the Webatuck Creek.

Callanan Industries for its limestone mining and processing facility in Port Ewen: 7 million GPD from a quarry sump, the Rondout Creek and on-site wells.

This 2009 aerial photograph looking east over the Hudson River shows Tilcon New York, which operates the Clinton Point Quarry in the Town of Poughkeepsie.(Photo: Spencer Ainsley/Journal file)

As of August, more than 200 permit requests had been submitted out of about 1,000 potential applicants statewide, according to a count maintained by a lawyer who is representing environmental groups in two lawsuits pending against the DEC.

The top 12 requests by power plants, including Indian Point in Westchester County, "is equal to the total freshwater usage of the state," attorney Rachel Treichler said.

New York's new law was prompted by a sweeping agreement reached in 2008 with seven other states that surround the Great Lakes. Five years in the making, the Great Lakes Compact initiated a number of cooperative actions, including programs that collect and categorize water-use information. A second agreement included the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec.

In this 2008 file photo, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland signs a bill ratifying the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact at the Marblehead Lighthouse in Marblehead, Ohio.(Photo: Jonathon Bird/News Herald)

That information is being used to assess the cumulative impacts of those withdrawals on the Great Lakes basin, which accounts for one fifth of the world's surface freshwater supply.

"The Great Lakes Compact reflects a very forward-looking effort by the governors and the (Canadian) premiers to put protections in place to make sure our waters remain at healthy levels and that water continues to be available for future use," said David Naftzger, executive director of the Conference of Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers.

But since statewide laws aren't limited to just a portion of a state, the programs also allow those states to understand what is happening elsewhere within their borders.

That picture is beginning to emerge in New York, which passed its water withdrawal permitting law in 2011. The bill received unanimous support from the state Legislature after two years of negotiations.

The measure was seen as a much-needed update to outdated water-supply provisions derived from statutes written primarily in the first half of the 20th century.

The measure also received guarded support from the Business Council, which said a "number of concerns" with the original bill had been addressed, including the "grandfathering" of existing water withdrawal capacities.

The resulting regulations were finalized by the DEC in 2013. The first two permit applications, one for the Town of New Windsor's consolidated water system and another in western New York, were announced in July 2013.

A month later, the DEC announced that the Ravenswood power plant in Queens had requested a permit to continue removing as much as 1.5 billion gallons from the East River every day.

A water withdrawal permit for the Ravenswood Generating Station in Queens was the subject of a lawsuit filed by environmental groups over whether the state Department of Environmental Conservation should conduct environmental reviews of those applications. The DEC has maintained it is exempted from the reviews.(Photo: Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency via Gannett News Service)

The DEC said the new law exempted any of those applications from a more thorough examination under the State Environmental Quality Review law, or SEQR, so long as the applicant did not ask to withdraw more water than it had reported using previously.

Environmental groups were stunned.

The Sierra Club and the Hudson River Fisherman's Association sued, claiming the law did not exempt the DEC from assessing the impact of Ravenswood's withdrawals. Instead, they argued, the agency had broad discretion to specify the terms and conditions of all water withdrawal permits.

"That really takes away the fisherman's capability of giving their expertise in these situations," said Gil Hawkins, president of the fisherman's association. "We are the people that ply these waters. Why wouldn't you want that information for the permitting?"

However, state Supreme Court Judge Robert McDonald of Queens sided with the DEC, saying the law "did not leave DEC the discretion" to refuse Ravenswood a permit.

The environmental groups have appealed.

Meanwhile, the two groups have filed another lawsuit seeking to compel a review of an application by Consolidated Edison at another power plant on the East River.

"We have common-law water rights which say that the needs of all the users have to be taken into account," Treichler, the attorney, said. "My fundamental question is, to what extent is the water permitting law overriding our existing water law, which requires the needs of all the users be considered?"